Caleb and Kate get into a terrible
argument. Like most couples, they “loved each other, but not every single
minute.” Caleb storms out, “hating his wife from top to bottom,” but he soon
cools off, having forgotten what the fight was even about. Before he returns to
make up with Kate, however, he sits down to rest, and while he is dozing, a
passing witch casts a spell. When the unsuspecting Caleb wakes up, he is a dog.
اضافة اعلان
Well, these things happen — in
children’s books. But while stupid fights, witches, and magic spells are all
common elements in stories for young people, what is uncommon about William
Steig’s 1977 picture book, “Caleb and Kate,” is that not a single child appears
in its pages. Nor do they in several of Steig’s other beloved children’s books,
at least not as main characters, whether monsters (“Shrek!”) or not.
“I never am trying to get anything
across,” Steig said of “Caleb and Kate” in an interview at the time. “I think
it’s deadly. It ruins writing to have purposes like that.”
Steig may not have been trying to
send a message to children, but children got the message anyway. “Caleb and
Kate” acknowledges a world in which adults — even a reader’s parents — fight,
but the world does not end when they do. Moreover, it suggests that grown-up
fights can be just as ludicrous as children’s squabbles, and adults can behave
in equally rash and regrettable ways. They are just grown-ups, after all — and
this is both comforting and amusing information for children to absorb.
“Children see the adult world as
mysterious and fascinating — and one they want to know,” said Leonard Marcus, a
historian of children’s literature. “To be able to see into this secret world
through children’s books creates a kind of empathy.”
Yet the adult protagonist has become
a rare figure in American children’s books. With a few notable exceptions — “A
Sick Day for Amos McGee” by Philip C. Stead and Erin E. Stead, and several
titles by author-illustrator Jon Agee come to mind — most children’s books
today are deeply child-centric. This shift began in the 1960s, with the rise of
developmental psychology, and intensified from the 1980s onward. “It’s become
kind of codified that books for children should be about young
children,” Marcus said, with a rule of thumb holding that the protagonist,
whether animal or human, be the same age or slightly older than the reader.
“Children see the adult world as mysterious and fascinating — and one they want to know. …To be able to see into this secret world through children’s books creates a kind of empathy.”
But that is a rule worth
questioning. Some might see the entrenchment of child-centeredness in
children’s literature as reinforcing what some social critics consider a rising
tide of narcissism in young people today. But to be fair: Such criticisms of
youth transcend the ages. What is certainly true now is the primacy of “mirrors
and windows,” a philosophy that strives to show children characters who reflect
how they look back to them, as well as those from different backgrounds, mostly
with an eye to diversity.
This is a noble goal, but those
mirrors and windows should apply to adults as well. Adults are, after all,
central figures in children’s lives — their parents and caregivers, their
teachers, their role models. They are also children’s future selves. What
better way to understand these overgrown children than to inhabit their points
of view? And yes, adults are often the Other — which makes them a mystery and a
curiosity. Literature offers insight into these occasionally intimidating
creatures.
The adult figures in children’s
literature are also frequently outsiders or eccentrics in some way, and quite
often subject to ridicule. They are the house painter Mr Popper, who finds
himself living with 12 penguins. They are boring Officer Buckle, who just wants
to impart safety tips. The implicit lesson is that grown-ups are not
infallible. It is OK to laugh at them and it is OK to feel compassion for them
and it is even OK to feel sorry for them on occasion.
In one of my favorite picture books,
“The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless Her Cat”, written by Lore Segal and
illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, the dour MrsLovewright is seemingly without
company other than that of the grocery deliveryman Dylan — until he delivers a
kitten at her request. “I don’t care what color so it’s little and cute and
purrs on my lap,” she instructs him. She names her tabby Purrly so that he
knows what he must do. But she quickly learns what every child must learn: You
cannot force anyone — animal or human — to do exactly what you want, let alone
to love you as you demand. It is a profound lesson, more easily absorbed when
delivered by a fussy old lady with flawed assumptions.
In children’s books with adult heroes, children get to conspire alongside their elders. Defying the too-often adversarial relationship between adults and children in literature. …
In real life, children revere adults
and they fear them. It only follows, then, that they appreciate when adult
characters behave admirably but also delight in seeing the consequences —
especially when rendered with humor — when they do not.
Nursery rhymes, folk tales, myths,
and legends overwhelmingly cast adults as their central characters — and have
endured for good reason. Think the old woman who lived in the shoe and the
villagers who prepare stone soup. For decades, children have gravitated toward
the fully adult gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and
Scandinavia and have gathered at the round table in King Arthur’s court.
In somewhat later tales, children
investigated crimes alongside Sherlock Holmes, adventured through Narnia,
inhabited Oz and traversed Middle-earth. Grown-up heroes can be hobbits, or
rabbits (“Watership Down”), badgers or moles (“The Wind in the Willows”).
Children join them no matter what because they like to be in league with their
protagonists and by extension, their authors. As John Updike once wrote, in a
children’s book review for The New York Times, “All successful children’s
literature has a conspiratorial element.”
In children’s books with adult
heroes, children get to conspire alongside their elders. Defying the too-often
adversarial relationship between adults and children in literature, such books
enable children to see that adults are perfectly capable of occupying their
shared world with less antagonism — as partners in life, in love and in
adventure. As people very much like themselves, actually. There is still almost
always a happy ending.
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